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Chapter 4 Excerpt from The Siege of Anticus: A Zombie Fantasy Novel

Insert standard disclaimer of no editing here.

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Dam surveyed the wreckage that his home had become. As he’d feared, his slide into the canyon had made it impossible for him to give warning to his fellow villagers in time, and devastation looked complete. The temple had burned, taking the nearby houses with it, and from the quantity of blackened corpses within the smoking ruin, it looked like most of the village had burned inside with it. Read the rest of this entry →

Chapter 3 Excerpt from The Siege of Anticus: A Zombie Fantasy Novel

Standard disclaimer: unedited and probably rotten.

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On the far side of the city, a pair of guards in ill-fighting and cracked leather armor studied the dust cloud approaching them. Already the day had become infinitely more interesting than any they’d experienced before, guarding the least-used gate in the entire city. The gate itself was almost never opened during their tenure, since they used the sally port to get to their station outside the city. Indeed, the only time it was opened was when one particular merchant took a wagon out in spring, and came back months later.

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Where I’ve Been

Like Jim Anchower, it’s been a while since I rapped at ya.  There are various reasons for this, not least being the attempt to pull off a NaNoWriMo in July.  Several friends joined me, which was cool, although attrition is beginning to take its toll.  I’m working on the sequel to The Curse of Troius right now, and I’m over 23k words into it.  I’m having fun and liking it, and 50k written (or more) in July will go a long way towards getting me to finish.  It’s tentatively entitled The Siege of Anticus, although I’ve been toying with Northreach Besieged lately.  We’ll see.  I hate trying to make titles for things.

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Chapter 2 Excerpt from The Siege of Anticus: A Zombie Fantasy Novel

As before, this excerpt is heavily unedited. It is a flashback of the aftermath of the attack on Daneswall.

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The flames from the burning town behind Comrick set the planes of his son’s face shifting constantly, giving him the look of a stranger. The old man kept trying to count how many survivors ranged ahead, but the half-panicked and struggling mass ahead of him defied his attempts. Those last moments in the church resurfaced in his mind, over and over, the sacrifice of two men whom he’d come to love sending tears to eyes still stinging from smoke. The desire to honor that heroism kept his legs moving even more than the fear of being caught by the shambling remnants of the horde.

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Chapter 1 Excerpt from the Siege of Anticus: A Zombie Fantasy Novel

Background: This is an excerpt from the sequel to my “critically acclaimed” and “best-selling” novel, The Curse of Troius.  This excerpt deals with the introduction of some new characters, members of Baron Northreach’s expedition to investigate the odd message sent by his son, Mikel Anders. It revolves around 4 young recruits attached to the veteran outfit. It is absolutely and 100% unedited so bear that in mind!

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Writing Slumps

God, I hate getting into a writing slump.  Some days, writing is the easiest thing in the world, you already have the sentences you want to write fully-formed in your mind and they just flow in the natural course of writing.  Other days, everything you write sounds like the most godawful piece of shit string of random characters that have ever been put into a sentence.  Today is one of the later for me.  Everything I write looks and sounds like shit, doesn’t convey what I mean, is utterly lifeless and boring.  I am doubting not only what I am writing now, but everything I have ever written.  God I hate days like this.

The Curse of Troius: A Zombie Fantasy Novel

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Five Things for Monday, May 10th

1.  My novel is now on sale at Amazon, Barnes & Noble’s website, even a couple of Indian websites and a couple of Asian ones.  Crazy.  Before I did it, I said I’d be pleased if I sold a dozen copies.  I’ve sold 15, so I am now officially happy.  I’ve set up a Facebook page for it and already have over 40 fans, a couple of whom I don’t know and never met.  It’s cool.  I was afraid to set one up, feeling like the world’s biggest narcissist, but Lady Aravan had a good point: I want to write for a living, and I need to promote the thing as best I can.  She’s right.  Now I just need to stop checking the page incessantly.

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Holding Your Novel

I got the proofing copy of my novel in the mail yesterday.  Holding your own book in your hands for the first time is surreal.  So is flipping it open and looking at words that you vaguely remember writing, but still feel alien and strange.  Some of it seemed like it was written by someone else – I literally cannot remember writing those words, even though I know exactly the scene it represented.  Flipping it open to a random page, I would see phrases that chunked like a frozen brick on a sidewalk, while others that sounded almost literary.

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Five Things for Friday, March 26th

1.  I’ve been reading a lot about the idea that this health care reform bill is going to cost the Democrats a lot in November’s elections.  The Republicans are planning on pushing the idea of repeal as a cornerstone of their election plank.  The problem I see with that approach is the idea that health reform is going to be on the minds of the public in seven months.  I think that overestimates the attention span of the American electorate by about six-and-a-half months at least.

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